Anne Lutz Fernandez addresses the post-pandemic problems with filling teaching positions.
Early in the pandemic the mainstream media ran a spate of stories about more teachers retiring early (points at self) or changing careers, exacerbating a crisis long in the making. Cameth then the contrarian backlash, exemplified by Derek Thompson’s 2022 Atlantic piece, “There is No National Teacher Shortage.” The discussion was dampened, and the issue now mostly gets covered by local outlets.
Denial of a shortage has been facilitated by several factors, recent analysis by Melissa Bamberger and Benjamin Creed shows. The most important has been a lack of accurate national data — so it’s great news that journalist Matt Barnum has compiled new data on teacher turnover. Last week, he shared his findings in a virtual discussion and in writing (and helpful charts).
The shortage is of course a matter of movement into and out of the field. There aren’t enough teachers on the way in: the pipeline is bad as interest in the career has plummeted, with the percent of college grads entering the profession lower than it’s been in a half century.
Then there are too many on the way out, as Barnum’s rigorous compilation and analysis of data from 21 states shows:
Most of those states have experienced four to five straight years of elevated teacher turnover, compounding the losses year after year. High-poverty schools in particular were already having a hard time keeping teachers.
Even though turnover finally appears to be trending down, the consequences persist.
Barnum uses as an example Texas, where if turnover had stayed at pre-pandemic rates, the state wouldn’t have lost 35,000 teachers, one out of ten of its total today. The problem is cumulative and widespread. 90% of the states for which he had data saw a “significant” increase in departures from 2019 to 2025.
What are the causes? Fernandez gets into that in the rest of this timely post. Read it here.